SENATE: Bernal confirmed to fill Riverside federal judge vacancy

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate voted Tuesday, Dec. 11, to confirm Jesus G. Bernal to the federal bench in Riverside, filling a three-year vacancy that forced many Inland Southern California cases out of the region.

The son of factory workers who studied at Yale and Stanford before serving in the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Riverside, Bernal was nominated by President Barack Obama at the urging of Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein.

“The people of Riverside need another judge,” Boxer, D-Calif., said during remarks on the Senate floor. “I’m proud it will be Jesus Bernal, a highly respected member of that community.”

Once sworn in, Bernal will become the only Latino district court judge in the district’s eastern division, Boxer said.

Bernal, 49, was confirmed to the U.S. District Court's central district of California by voice vote, meaning no senator raised any objection to his selection. Reached by telephone, Bernal declined to comment Tuesday afternoon.

His confirmation was hailed by U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips, who since 2009 has served as the lone sitting federal judge in a court that serves a population of roughly 4.2 million people across Riverside and San Bernardino counties. With too few judges, between two-thirds and three-quarters of locally filed federal civil cases -- along with a large number of criminal cases -- were referred to Los Angeles, Phillips said.

Bernal’s confirmation will keep many of those cases in Riverside, where they belong, she said. That means lawyers, litigants, law enforcement officials and others involved with proceedings won’t have to travel as often to downtown Los Angeles for trial.

Bernal has practiced law for two decades. Since 2006 he has served as the directing attorney for the Federal Public Defender's Office in Riverside, overseeing a staff that handles cases for indigent defendants in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“He’s a terrific lawyer,” Phillips said of Bernal, who has argued cases in her court for years. “He has wonderful academic credentials, he has a terrific temperament and I really look forward to working with him as a colleague.

One of five children in a working class family, Bernal was a cum laude graduate from Yale and earned his law degree at Stanford before being admitted to the state bar in 1990. He has practiced law for more than 20 years and has no record of discipline or administrative action, according to the California State Bar.

Obama formally nominated Bernal in April, but partisan discord in the Senate has slowed the process of confirming judges – even in cases deemed judicial emergencies, as was the Riverside vacancy.

“I think he was caught up in election-year politics,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law in Richmond, Va. “I don’t think it had anything to do with him.”

Tobias said the gridlock is slowing the wheels of justice around the country, particularly in busy districts such as the Eastern Division of California’s Central District.

In a statement praising the confirmation, Feinstein, D-Calif., said the court is critically overloaded.

“It has only a single District Judge. Yet it encompasses 2,000 annual civil filings and 4.2 million people – roughly the population of the entire commonwealth of Kentucky, which has nine active District Judges and seven senior judges to handle its workload,” Feinstein said. “In short, filling this particular seat is very important and will bring needed judicial resources to the Federal bench in Riverside.”